i salute our chairman, steve israel, for being a spectacular field marshal in all this. i commend all of my colleagues, mike leaders, steny hoyer, -- chris van hollen, the leads -- the list goes on. all the women who traveled. we were thinking it was possible, and it was. i would say the one disappointment that i had was that medicare message that was at stake was so mr. reprmisrepresented by republicans that the people were confused. people said, why did the democrats want to cut medicare? we did not. we used the savings of medicare to extended for another decade and provide benefits immediately for seniors right now. republicans took that same money and gave tax cuts to the rich. that was a message that outside money spent a fortune to misrepresent. that is why the election of barack obama was so very important. to protect medicare -- even though we could not get the majority, we knew when he won that many of the issues, affordable care, medicare, were protected. we had a different view of what happened that day. we saw some of the members that we elective, the intelle